The 24-year-old UPDF tank driver in South Sudan

For Amelia Birungi, it was love at first sight. It is as if the 45-tonne artillery tank was calling out to her. Daring her.
“All I could think of was, ‘If I drive that thing, I will be happy with myself’,” she recounts.

She followed that little voice and months of training later she had joined the very small club of women that drive tanks within the UPDF.
In the battle group currently based in South Sudan, she is the only woman manning, or should we say “womaning”, the T55 tanks.

Not like you could tell if you saw her in action, tearing through the track full throttle during a warm up exercise. It is when she nimbly swings down its gun that you realise it was a woman, a 24-year-old woman, who was at the helm of the powerful battle vehicle.

There is nothing to driving it
“It is more or less like a car,” she says to my queries on how the machine works as she takes a seat next to me in the Gazebo overlooking the rest of the UPDF camp in Juba. “But unlike a car, which requires little or no energy, the tank needs a firm hand. Braking, for example, in a car is very easy. It is much harder in the tank,” she explains.

The short natural hair that frames her youthful chocolate face is worn in a side part, one that appears to have been painstakingly combed.

Birungi has a very firm deliberate way about her that goes very well with her army fatigues. From how she shakes my hand to how she does not dilly dally over where to sit.

It is even in her stance when she sits and her gait as she guides me through the rough ground towards her tank. But she also speaks in a soft voice with musical lilt and her smile can only be described as shy and sweet.

The Lance Corporal, who was passed out just last December, knows she stands out in many places, but she takes the minor spectacle status in stride. Even at the camp, everybody knows her as the only woman in tank division. People are still awed that she, a girl, handles the tank.

She narrates an incident of when she arrived in South Sudan; “I had just come and when the equipment arrived, I went to collect my tank.

I thought nothing of it. I just jumped in and started driving, but some other soldiers from the South Sudanese army were so surprised. Someone even asked me what I was doing .They could not believe I was the driver,” she shares, a smile lighting up her face.

She enjoys surprising people who all along were expecting a man to jump out of the driver’s seat. “I feel so proud,” she says.
And it does not end at strangers. She tells me her mother was incredulous during her passing out parade. “Was that really you up there?” she kept asking.

And according to Birungi, her civilian best friend is still surprised she had it in her to make it through basic training let alone drive a tank. “I do not think she has gotten over it even now,” says Birungi with a giggle. Fortunately for her, there is always support or quiet acceptance behind the incredulity.

Although she called it more like driving a car, it still was a challenge to master the machine. After basic training, she went for 10-month training in artillery. This was where she learnt to operate the tank.

“We were nine girls who went for training but only two of us managed to handle the tank,” shares this sixth born. She says she managed to succeed where so many others failed only by putting mind over matter. “I put it in my heart that I would drive that tank,” she says.

Though there are several women soldiers driving tanks in the UPDF, tank driving is still a man’s world. The fact that almost every other soldier at this camp knows her by name as the lady who drives the tank is telling.

The only woman among the men
All her colleagues, save for one at her unit, are men and the other woman is not a driver. She makes light of the whole coping thing saying she has developed a sort of camaraderie with the boys. “They are my brothers, and friends. They treat me very well,” she says. She is not coy about whether she is propositioned often by the men around her.

“They fear me. I think they even wonder where they can begin with this very tough lady,” she says, her face dead serious. She does appear no nonsense at that moment. I can see a man with fresh ideas swallowing his tongue when she wears this face.

But she insists she did not scare all the potentials away and is single by choice. “I want to work for at least three years. I want to enjoy this job some more before I can even think of a family,” she says.

Whatever dreams her mother and older siblings had for her did not involve the army. Birungi did a stint as a secretary at Kihungye Primary School in Bushenyi, not far from where she was born and raised. This was after she finished her Senior Six in 2008 and was still trying to figure out what to do next.

She says she blindsided everyone, including her two brothers who were in the army, when she declared her intention to follow long-nursed dreams of joining the army. “They kept asking if it is what I really wanted and I had to keep repeating that I was sure it was what I wanted,” she says.

It was after making it through recruitment that she first saw the tank and made a quiet vow to herself. Driving one of the mean battle machines means Birungi will always be in the heat of things if she ever goes to combat.
She explains how the tank works. She is one of a team of four on each tank. A commander, the first gunner, the driver and second gunner brings up the rear. “My job is to keep driving. I cannot afford to falter in the middle of combat,” she says.

Eager for a chance at the frontline
She is yet to be in the thick of battle as she had not been deployed when the UPDF encountered rebel forces who were marching on Juba. But she still has something to say about being in the middle of an exchange. “I am not afraid. This is what I signed up to do,” she says her training could also be the reason she is so confident in the driver’s seat.

“But I do pray to God to watch over me,” she adds after a moment’s pause.
A few weeks back, she drove the tank from Juba to another UPDF camp in Bor. It is the longest distance she has driven the tank yet, all of 200km. “I made it but I was so tired everyone could see it including my commander,” she says.

So she does not have that many kilometres to her name yet. But as far as hitting the ground running goes, Birungi has done it. Roaring into a male dominated field aboard an intimidating powerful battle vehicle. Proving her mettle right along the boys.

And as for future plans, Birungi would love to conquer another machine, again in an area not many women world over have conquered. “I would love to train in air. I think it would be interesting,” she says. Seeing where she went with the last thing she found interesting, I can only say Godspeed to her.

What it takes
Training to be a tank driver is in two parts. The theory part and then the practical bit. Birungi completed her basic army training at Kaweweta Recruit Training School in November 2012.

She joined for the second phase of her training at Kalama Armoured Warfare Training school in Mubende in 2013, and finished the 10-month training in December 2013. It is here that the instructors are able to separate the drivers from the chaff.

“How you fare in the practicals determine whether you will end up driving a tank or be sent elsewhere,” said Birungi. Of the nine girls who went for training with Birungi, only two, according to her, managed to handle the tank.

titbits
Lance Corporal, Amelia Birungi, is the sixth born of Nathan Kahirita and Rosette Baryomumeri. She is a tank driver with the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces currently based in South Sudan. She joined the army in August 2011, and received her basic army training at Kaweweta Recruit Training School until November 2012.

Schools: Uphill College Bushenyi for secondary education. She was deployed to armoured brigade where she learnt to drive a tank, and was passed out in December 2013.